A way tech companies could "save the world"

Everyday, we hear tales of the ways tech companies make a
difference. Apps that will somehow solve problems that big
institutions couldn’t in the last 50 years; social networking
sites that somehow spark revolutions that people themselves
don’t… Many tech startup pitches would give high schoolers the
idea that, in order to eradicate poverty, there’s no point
learning about poverty itself; you just need to learn how to
code.

This overly optimistic talk of technology (brilliantly called
“solutionism” by Evgeny
Morozov) not only makes false promises: it also takes focus from
the things that tech companies could indeed do to make their
businesses more socially responsible. And there is one crucial
practice that hasn’t become common in cool (but adult-normative)
Silicon Valley: proactively listening to youth’s views, fears and
uses of technology.

Social media have given youth a space to do things that they
can’t do in other contexts. They may not have the chance to be
public offline, but certain public posts online will give them a
taste of it; they may not get to control what information they
can keep private from their parents offline, but they can decide
who gets to see their status updates online.

Now: technologists aren’t social psychologists, and youth aren’t
the only users of technology. What does this have to do with tech
companies themselves? A socially responsible development process
needs to contemplate youth and their needs when making design
decisions that will affect them. Changes in Facebook’s algorithm
for deciding what goes on top of news feeds, complexities in privacy
settings – do they have special implications for youth who
accept everybody in school into their friends’ lists? Age limits in online services
– what will happen with users who are under 15?

Don’t get me wrong: technology isn’t the silver bullet for all
problems related to youth and emotional and social intelligence.
What I’m saying is that technology is giving them (us, really) a
space to learn by practice; to have a taste of possibilities we
don’t yet have offline.

Contemplating youth when your main job is to write code, or
design web architectures (or, really, when your job is to make
sure your supermarket will grow, or your clothing company will
increase its sales) is impossible if you don’t reach out to youth
as consultants to share what they know about their uses of your
service. If you don’t reach out to social researchers who spend
their lives interviewing youth and making sense of their
responses.

After all, we all were young once; now it’s time to make things
better for those who are young today, and those who will be young
tomorrow.